A Little Undead Read online

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  A Little Undead

  By Laira Evans

  She was feeling optimistic. Zombie incursions from the red zone were at an all time low, she finally had her own apartment, and she was about to start her first full-time job as a police officer. This was the true beginning of the rest of her life. Now if only she could figure out where this sudden craving for human blood came from...

  Chapter 1: A New Beginning

  It is a testament to the gravity of what came after that perhaps the most destructive natural disaster in the history of the modern world is now barely a footnote in the history books.

  – Massachusetts Historical Society

  The bus ride was relatively uneventful. The bus's suspension fought against the long stretch of bumpy highway, largely unsuccessfully. Some sat in tense silence hour after hour and others chattered nervously, children exclaiming proudly that this was their first time outside Haven. The adults – I still had to remind myself I was one as well now – had a rather rough time of it. The repurposed school bus had all the leg room of a cupboard and about as much padding. 'At least there's one thing my height is good for.'

  My sister, Holly, sat next to me, staring with wonder at a countryside more wild than it had been in a hundred years. I could hear her sigh as the bus clunked over an old stone bridge, gaze transfixed by the sparkling waters. I drifted in and out of sleep, sunlight leaching at my strength as always as we passed slow mile after mile. As enrapturing as the sights might be, the allure of a cat-nap was too strong.

  It wasn't until we passed into a valley an hour from Boston that we had our first incident. A zombie scattered into pieces on the windshield, prompting screams of fear followed by cautious cheering. My eyes snapped open at the impact as I quickly cataloged it's appearance before it burst apart. It was obvious it was a rotter even at first glance. White eyes stared out of a sunken face, its flesh so rotten and ragged it was difficult to believe it was ever human. The most easily recognizable of all the zombie types we had been taught about in school, it was also the most common. Unlike ferals or red-eyes they were typically active during the day, though perfectly willing to take a bite out of the unwary that stumbled across them in the dark. Grotesque creatures, they were half-blind, slow-moving, stupid, and so infectious once fully ripened that a drop of blood or saliva in an open wound or a scratch from one of their fingernails was enough to kill you without antibiotics. Walking petri dishes of bacteria, they were always rotting but never quite falling apart. Stuffy air or not, I was glad the bus service mandated that the windows stay sealed shut at all times.

  It was the first zombie I had seen since arriving in Haven, the first since the accident that had taken my memories, yet my pulse was as steady as ever. As the windshield wiper scraped the blood and particulate from the glass I tried to conjure up some hint of fear or disgust but all I felt was cold. It wasn't that I wanted to shriek or run in fear or anything, especially considering I was just hired as a police officer, but as I laid a comforting hand on Holly's shoulder after seeing her blood-drained face I couldn't help but think that I should be feeling some degree of shock. Putting the matter aside I plumped up Holly's discarded jacket and made a little pillow on her shoulder before laying down my head to rest.

  My head felt funny. Where was I?

  “Th-thirsty,” the word was only a whisper but even so it slid through my throat like sandpaper, ending as a hiss through too-dry lips. I tried again to make a sound but stopped with a cough. Shallow, hitching breaths followed, leaving me with no air to speak. Spotting a paper cup with a tantalizing shadow of water showing through it's surface I reached out for it but came up just shy. Fingers still clumsy from sleep the cup jerked and spilled, leaving only a few drops to coat my raw throat.

  A sticky note was attached to the side of my pillow. “Gone to call Mom, be back soon. Love, Dad.”

  'A hospital', I realized, 'I'm in a hospital'. I sat up slowly, wincing as heavy bruises across my chest and left shoulder made themselves known. Peeling back the medical gown I noticed an angry diagonal red line running across my body. 'From a seat belt?' I wondered, thinking it would explain the soft neck brace keeping me from turning my head too far. The bruises looked yellow, as if already half healed, and my neck felt as if it was never injured at all. How long had I been here? There was no water bag and nasty needles like TV dramas showed coma patients having, so it couldn't have been that long, right?

  I flexed my toes, wondering what was taking Daddy so long. My throat was still dry and my injuries didn't hurt that bad. The doctor's wouldn't mind if I got up for just a little while, right? Besides, the bathroom wasn't very far away... unless that door went to a closet or something. That would be annoying. Turning in the bed I let my feet dangle off the side as I peered through the window. It was night, I realized, heart jumping as I wondered if Daddy had left me here alone. I took a long deep breath like Mom told me and felt my heartbeat slow, blood ceasing to pound in my ears.

  Looking downwards I noticed something out of place. A long stretch of yellow tape with black lettering stretched around the hospital. Looking towards a section under the street lamp I could just barely make it out. “Quar-an-tine?” I didn't recognize the word but it sounded like something not very nice.

  The lights flickered and in the flash I saw a shadow race past the window of the door. Slipping under the sheets headfirst I felt a soft click as the neck brace came undone. Yelling internally at my foolishness for letting a nurse or something scare me I touched the brace, wondering if it was alright to leave it off. 'My neck feels fine,' I decided. Besides, it was annoying and itchy. Turning on my belly I lowered myself from the high bed, toes curling as my bare feet touched the stone-cold floor. Gathering up my clothes and the paper cup from the counter I headed towards the bathroom.

  “Unhh.”

  'What was that?' I was too startled to breathe as something pounded from inside the bathroom door, scraping down the wood. 'A dog?' While not afraid of dogs, I still remembered Uncle John showing me the old bite marks on his arm. I didn't know why a dog would be in the hospital but it was probably better to wait for a grown-up.

  Instead of waiting I pulled the sheet across the side of the bed to shield myself and changed as quickly as I could. The socks, however, I spent a few minutes to position. Such troublesome things, always bunching in my shoes. Why did people wear socks anyways?

  The hallway outside my room was creepy-silent. Maybe Dad was outside smoking? Mom wouldn't like that if she found out. I'd have to stop him. The exit sign was just a few steps away. Planting my feet, I pushed at the heavy door, hurt shoulder pinging at me as I drove it open. '?' It was too much to see at once, like a vision of Hell from one of the movies my dad watched somehow come to life. If it had been too quiet inside the hospital, now it was too loud. Car alarms and shouts combined with the roaring of fires as bodies dropped from windows onto the crowds below. Then I saw one of the bodies get up again. A scream welled up in my throat–

  “Julie, wake up.” Familiar hands gently shook me awake as I swallowed what would have been an embarrassing outburst.

  “We're there already?” I asked, trying to hide how much my hands were shaking. 'Just a nightmare.' It hadn't felt like I was dreaming. Even though the memory of it was blurring I could still feel the imprint of the door on my palms, smoke scratching my lungs as I drew breath to scream.

  Holly shook her head as I peered around her neck to look outside. “No, just the checkpoint.”

  Looking down the aisle I spotted a man and a woman in military fatigues slowly making their way down the bus. Hastily I dug out my ID, not wanting their attention on me any longer than necessary. My classmates had informed me quite enough times of how strange I wa
s. I had no need of an enforced seven day stint in quarantine to remind me. The woman reached my row and snatched the card from my hand, apparently having no patience for niceties. “Nineteen?” Her eyebrow arched in disbelief but then she just snorted and tossed the card into my lap. Holly had already stored hers safely away by the time the soldiers reached the next aisle but my hand lingered over the laminated card.

  Age nineteen, black hair, blue eyes, 4'8” and 75 lb. It was more of a travel visa than a drivers license as existed before the Infection, but I didn't blame her too much for thinking I had faked my age a bit. Even with all my efforts to appear older I was lucky to pass for sixteen, let alone the nineteen my ID age indicated me to be. These days even people who knew me were starting to forget that Holly wasn't the older sister.

  The dream was just a dream. It had to be. Even if I hadn't lost my memories, I couldn't have been older than three when the outbreak started. Reading a quarantine sign or being tall enough to get off the hospital bed was out of the question. I hadn't even hit puberty until I was sixteen for crying out loud. It was more likely that everyone guessed I was older than I actually was when I first arrived in Haven, not younger, right? With the amnesia I'd suffered I certainly wouldn't have been in any position to dispute the matter. I frowned and turned over the card, not wanting to look at the unpleasantly young face in the picture any longer.

  Unlike I had imagined, there was no clear sense of where Boston began amidst the wilderness and the decaying husks of a fallen era. There was no stockade here, as was common in most post-Fall settlements. Fences, where there were any at all, were small affairs. A bare thirty feet of chain fence enclosed what passed for a yard behind one of the houses, a dog and child at play behind that fragile safety net. Another outlying citizen appeared to have fenced in just his doorstep, an extra little step of precaution against the ravenous undead. Traveling deeper into the city the signs of fire-gutted buildings and ragged concrete lessened. Windows whole and free of cracks grew more common, though bars or wooden slats often blocked them for security. Military convoys (eyeing our still blood-spattered bus with considerable suspicion) tapered off, replaced by two-man patrols of police in riot gear.

  It was a walking city, I realized. As the bus crept further in we slowed more and more, pedestrians steadfast in their control of the road. I didn't particularly mind. Inconvenient as it was, it was a sign that Boston was alive and well. The living walked openly in the streets without looking over their shoulders or even carrying visible weapons. It was the largest city on Earth to survive the Infection; a place where people could live free under the sky. And if having so many people near me in addition to the smattering of people on the bus was making me nervous enough to dig my fingernails into the seat padding, well, it was something that I was looking forward to getting used to.

  “So this is Boston.” Adjusting the straps of my hiking backpack I stepped off to the side of the bus to wait for Holly. Puttering like a dying beast against my back the engine slowly stuttered to a stop. The old yellow school bus probably should have been retired a decade ago instead of serving as long distance transport from the outlying provinces of the Republic of New England. As it was they gave it a hasty paint job, some steel reinforcements to impede zombie attacks in the event of engine failure, and a snow plow. Somehow I doubted the plow's most common use was for snow.

  The bus driver was the helpful sort, even if he was still regarding me as a somewhat suspicious person. I wasn't sure if it was my too-pale skin, the questionable age on my ID card, or the fact that everyone on the bus with us acted like I had some sort of plague. The directions he gave me to the national college of the Republic were clear and concise, but he still bugged me a little. I couldn't remember it clearly, but I had the impression that all bus drivers were old men with a hatred of road songs. To see a young, clean-shaven man in army fatigues and a pistol at his hip felt like a corruption of a childhood memory, and I held too few of those already. But in the end... things change.

  We still hadn't reached the true center of the city but already I could feel a hint of the world Before. While walls and decades-old signposts were stained and pitted from neglect the windows and sidewalks told a different story. For all that it was still a husk of its former self, the city showed a certain cautious vibrancy that in this age was far more precious than gold. Of course, these days that measurement also went for bullets and pizza.

  Looking closely along the broken and weed-stricken sidewalk there were signs of renewed habitancy everywhere. Windows, though still barred, were left open to let in the noonday sun. Hand-painted signs hung above nearly every doorway, the shops eager to take in the milling bus crowd. Up above street level a number of small herb gardens hung elegantly, a hint of life to come. Looking closer, I spotted a number of small green shoots poking up from the roofs. Covered in pavement and cement the city might be, but they were taking full advantage of what space they had.

  Holly exited the bus at last, lugging along her full to bursting backpack and book-bag. “That was amazing! Can you believe it went that fast?” It seemed the heavy bags she carried weren't dulling her bubbling enthusiasm.

  I hummed at her noncommittally and wondered how she had contained herself throughout my long nap. “Buses aren't exactly my idea of luxury travel.” That said, I had been pleasantly surprised at how empty the bus had been. Being in a confined space with a number of other people was not my idea of fun.

  Holly sniffed, playfully slapping at my shoulder. “Well excuse me, not all of us have ridden in a car before. I guess you'll just have to let me take a spin in your new police car to make it up to me.”

  “I'll be lucky if they give me a bicycle. Let's head out, daylight's wasting.” Shouldering a hiking backpack that probably had the same volume I did I made it two steps before Holly took my hand and tugged me off course.

  “One stop first, please?” The power of her pleading puppy-dog eyes was lessened by the fact that at sixteen she was already taller than I was.

  'Mustn't dwell on that,' I thought to myself. This city was a chance to reinvent myself. A chance to finally be recognized as an adult and live a normal life. The family that had adopted us was great, but it had never felt like home. Holly had adapted well enough, but maybe I had just been too old to think of myself as anything other than a guest in their house. The nagging notion that I should try harder to remember our real mother certainly hadn't helped me settle in. But I was a grown-up now, appearances be damned, and I wasn't going to let this opportunity pass me by. Perhaps I was pinning my hopes a bit high on a city that still looked half gutted, but hey, maybe that just meant it had character.

  I let loose an exaggerated sigh and let Holly lead me into a shop titled 'Schaefer's Iced Goods.' Contrary to it's name the interior was pleasantly warm, a welcome change after multiple hours on a bus with a broken heater. All along one wall ran a long freezer, its lightly frosted surface enough of a deterrent to turn my attention towards the warmer half of the room. “Coffee!”

  The elegantly dressed blonde woman behind the counter gave me an indulgent smile as I practically melted onto a stool, backpack dropping to the ground beside me. “Large with extra sugar, please.” A few sips later and any qualms I had over the amount of plastic RNE credits I'd had to hand over had nearly vanished. After all, I was about to start a new job and I had plenty of stockpiled pasta in my backpack to tide me over to my first paycheck. I'd survive somehow, I always did.

  “New in town?”

  “How could you tell?” I replied, not particularly curious. Following her nod I saw Holly turning around, a small waxed package in her hands.

  “Julie, what's ice cream?”

  Spinning back to the barista my stunned disbelief shifted to excitement at the sight of her nod. Paying the asking price with no more than a small grimace I tore open the package with anxious but oh so careful haste. “I can't believe someone was able to make this again.” It was golden vanilla, flecked with ice, the scent wafti
ng up from the open packaging enticingly.

  “For about two years now, actually,” explained the woman. Ducking under the counter she found them two plastic spoons likely salvaged from a pre-Infection factory.

  “Holly, you should try the first bite.”

  Still curious, she lifted a small dollop with her spoon, tongue questing outwards to test its surface. With a slight start at its flavor she took the rest in one bite. “Mmmh. This is good!”

  Taking a bite myself I kept it on my tongue to savor the flavor but I couldn't keep a small frown from creeping onto my face. “It doesn't taste quite like I remember.” Spotting the coming question from the blonde I headed it off before it could fully form. “Yes, I'm older than I look.”

  “Of course... Well, it's actually made with goat's milk. Cow's milk is tough to find these days.”

  “Gotcha.” Mentally berating myself over the use of teen-speak I soothed my annoyance over the slip with further consumption of ice cream. It was then that I saw it. While her right ear was normal, her left curved back to a delicate point. “Penny the pixie,” I murmured without thinking. I knew immediately that I had made a mistake.

  “What did you just say?” she asked slowly, head tilting to the side.

  “Come on Holly, we need to go.” Despite no doubt being curious herself Holly followed my lead, carrying out the ice cream with her.

  “Where did you hear that name?” the barista called after me, voice tinged with suspicion.

  I sped up my pace, nearly slamming the door behind me as we left. It was an old name, a sort of playground nickname from a time so long ago it felt more like a dream than a memory. 'No, it can't be a memory, it can't be.' I felt sick to my stomach, backpack suddenly heavy enough to nearly drag me to the ground. I slumped against the wall of a bakery the moment we turned the corner, struggling to regain my composure.